What if the Warrior and Bulldog didn’t leave the WWF in 1992?

Summerslam 1992, Wembly arena in London England. Macho Man Randy Savage lost (via countout) to the Ultimate Warrior in the WWF championship match. Later in the main event, the British Bulldog defeated Bret Hart for the Intercontential championship in front of a home crowd of 80, 000.

This probably would rank as one of the Bulldogs greatest wrestling moments. However, when the next PPV rolls round (Survivor Series 92) both men are gone. One of the stories going round was that they were caught with some naughty medicine that made them bigger, and they were shown the door.

But how would the WWF play out if they didn’t leave?

Well first off, lets deal with the next PPV Survivor Series. The Bulldog was scheduled to defend the IC title against the Mountie. It would be fair to say that the Bulldog would have very likely defended successfully. However, that does leave us with the Yokozuna/Virgil match that was added to the card whenever the Bulldog/Mountie match never happened. This is Yokozuna’s debut and where he makes his big first impression impact, so we can’t really leave him off the card due to his dominance in 1993.
We’ll add Yokozuna to the team of the Headshrinkers and Virgil to the team of High Energy, changing the opening match from a tag match to a 6 man tag match.
As for the Warrior, he was due to tag with Randy Savage against Ric Flair and the debuting, Scott ‘Razor Ramon’ Hall. What ended up happening was Mr Perfect took the Warriors spot and the team of Savage and Perfect won by a DQ. If Warrior stayed then they would have won regardless, either by a similar DQ finish or with Flair taking the pin from Savage (Wouldn’t be a good start for Razor Ramon getting pinned on his PPV debut).

Next up is the Royal Rumble. According to the rumours from over the years, the main event was supposed to be Bret Hart defending the WWF title against the Warrior in a face vs face match. This would be a good chance to cement Bret as a serious main eventer by getting a clean pinfall victory over the Warrior. Something similar to what Hogan did to the Warrior just three years earlier
This leaves Razor Ramon out but with the British Bulldog as the Intercontential Champion then this would make a good pairing. It could potentially be a good time to crown Razor Ramon his first title. However, it may be better to hold off that victory a little longer and have Bulldog successfully defend his title a second time on PPV.

Marty Janetty and Shawn Michaels originally fought for the IC title at the Rumble but this time the match will take place as a normal one on one. Shawn will take the victory as before and will prepare in the following weeks for his Wrestlemania match against the Bulldog for the IC title.

After the Rumble, this is where things could get complicated regarding the Warrior. After suffering a PPV loss to Bret, it would seem what would make sense is for to turn the Warrior heel (!) and fued with his once long time enemy, now partner, Randy Savage. Although they feuded at length in the past, it was Warrior who was the face while Savage was the heel. This would be the roles reversed.

The problem is, the Warrior was not very keen on turning heel. Rumour had it that there was plans for a turn at Summerslam 92 but Warrior turned it down.

Another issue to take into account is Hogan returning again to the WWF. Would this knock the Warrior’s nose out of joint? With a returning Hulkster, the WWF could push for Hogan/Warrior II (possibly at Wrestlemania 9) but after losing a PPV already, Warrior may feel a second straight loss would hit his ‘stock value’.

It might be fair to say, that the Warrior could just as easily walk from the WWF like he did in 1996. Or annoy McMahon so much that he would let him go once Hogan was safely on board.

Come Wrestlemania 9, Shawn will be victorious against the Bulldog and become the Intercontential for the first time, (helping cement his ‘Mr Wrestlemania’ moniker). The Bulldog’s impressive 6 month reign comes to an end. Where does his path continue?

The next PPV is the brand new King of the Ring tournament. Now that Bulldog is still with the WWF in this alterative reality, he will take the spot that Mr Perfect would have taken. (Since the Warrior in this reality wouldn’t have left prior to Survior Series, there would be no need for Mr Perfect to come back to the ring as a face. – Possibly Perfect could act as Razor’s manager…?)

This would mean that the semi-final match of the tournament would be Bret Hart vs The British Bulldog – a rematch from Summerslam 92. Of course Bret will win bringing the score between them 1 all. No doubt this will tease us for a third match further down the line...

Now we're leading into the summer of 93 with the evil forgeiner champion Yokozuna. Although Davy has the muscular build of Hogan and wore red, white and blue, the lack of an american accent would mean that Lex Lurger would still have been the guy to replace Hulkamania.

So what does Davey do during the summer? Well, Bret and the Hart family were fueding with Jerry Lawler so it would seem right that he would be involved in that as well. Prehpas initially with the Harts, but it may seem a bit too loaded on the side of the Hart family. A heel turn were he allies himself with Jerry Lawler. He could use the reason of jealous of Bret for turning (he beat Bret for the IC title at summerslam but Bret got the WWF title a few months later, bret gets to headline wrestlemania, become king of the ring etc).

When Surivor Series 93 rolls round, the Bulldog could either be part of Jerry Lawler's (well, shawn michaels in the end) team against the Hart family or he could be part of the 'Forgein Fanatics' team in the main event against Lex Lurgers all american team.

With the Bulldog heel turn, it may put a hold on Owen's heel turn. It may be the Bulldog who defeats Bret in the opening match of Wrestlemania X and then, after watching Bret claim the WWF that night (another reason to resent his brother-in-law), continues the fued until Summerslam 94 where they have a cage match in the main event for the WWF title.

OF course, before we get to Summerslam, we have the 1994 King of the Ring which was orginally won by Owen and had the return of Jim Neidhart who turned heel and alliened himslef with Owen. Prehaps if the Bulldog was around, it would have been him who would have become King of the Ring? And maybe we would have seen a series of tag matches on the house show circuit with good guy brothers Bret and Owen against their nasty brother in laws, Neidhard and Smith...?
I'm going to cut it here because we're getting near the point where Davy Boy returned to the WWF from his spell in WCW.

In conclusion
Hard to put a conclusion to this one.The Warrior seems to be the sort of guy who doesn't seem to stick around to long in a place if things aren't going totally the way he wants. So maybe its safe to assume he wouldn't be there much past Survivor Series 92.
As for the Bulldog, he's one of those guys who gets mentioned when talk turns to 'guys who never held the top title but possibly could of...'. (Ted Diabise, Roddy Piper and Jake Roberts could probably be added to that list) He held the Euro, Tag, IC and hardcore and speaking from someone from the UK, it seems a shame that he never quite got to complete the set. I guess when he was at his prime, it was during a time when heavyweight title reigns weren't hot potatoed as much.

Keep in mind Bulldog was never planned to win the IC title at all. At Summerslam 1992, HBK was to beat Bret for the belt. With a change of venue to Wembley, Bret vs Bulldog was born, and with Bret's nudging, they got to go on last. But Vince still went ahead with the original plan, which was to put the belt on Shawn at the next opportunity, Saturday Night's Main Event. I can't recall right now what Survivor Series 92's original plan was, but Bret was supposed to fight sum1 else in the main event, not Shawn, which in turn could've meant Bulldog may have had a rematch against Shawn, though he never would've won the belt, and Shawn's impending rivalry with Jannetty was originally set for WM8, then WM 9 (for the title), but Marty couldn't keep clean and kept missing all these events. Also keep in mind Shawn only ended up dropping the belt (to be won vacant by Razor Ramon) due to frustrations backstage and he himself was so close to jumping to WCW they forced him to drop the belt before he left with the belt in tow. A WWE where Shawn left for WCW in late 93 would've changed the WWE landscape forever indeed.

Very interesting read. Regrets that Warrior didn't do more in WWF. Such a crazy character. So much intensity. Bulldog was a bit rough around the edges, but he was a solid fighter. "My bite is worse than my bark". Thanks for an entertaining blog. What if, eh? ....